HTML5 support in mobile devices

Now that the HTML5 set of standards has reached Recommendation status (the W3C’s way of saying it’s now a published standard) we thought we’d take a look at how support for HTML5 has grown in shipping mobile devices over the past few years.

This chart shows the number of devices released each year that support varying numbers of HTML5 properties. So what does this mean? Essentially this chart is showing that support for HTML5 in mobile devices is ramping rapidly. The changes really started in 2009 and ramped strongly from there.

Number of HTML5 features supported by number of new devices released by year

Number of HTML5 features

Hover over chart areas to see detailed data points.

Note: This chart counts newly-released devices rather than the overall volume. Thus the cumulative volume of devices released with significant levels of HTML5 support will paint a more dramatic picture.

Within this growth story, however, there is a much fragmentation. The overall progression is strong and clear but content publishers should be careful not to assume too much of their users’ devices since, even in recent years, many devices are released with little or no support for HTML5.

This data is sourced from DeviceAtlas which in turn sources data from a world-wide network of sites, gathered programatically but with an added level of hand-curation and validation. The HTML5 properties in question can be seen here but include the following:

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